As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
Summary
After matriarch Addie Bundren dies, her Mississippi family sets out on a grueling journey by wagon to bury her in the town she requested, the trip stretching into days of flood, fire, and mounting absurdity while each family member narrates a piece of the ordeal in turn. Faulkner assembles the novel from fifteen different voices, including Addie's own from beyond the grave, to build a darkly comic and deeply strange portrait of grief, duty, and family dysfunction. The novel is often cited as one of the most technically audacious works in American fiction.
Historical Context & Significance
The 1931 Pulitzer for fiction went to Margaret Ayer Barnes's Years of Grace, a now largely forgotten chronicle of Chicago society. Faulkner's formally radical novel received no prize despite the immense influence it would go on to have over later American writers.